Now that youngest is safe and not currently sucking the life out of our home,it is time to focus on what we missed with the other kids. As I have said many times before,they are all three prenatally alcohol effected. They are also high functioning and shut down when they are overwhelmed. While this makes living with them easier on many levels,it also means that those who know them only casually think they are “normal”. In many ways they are-if you subtract a few years of maturity and don’t expect consistent executive functioning.
My eighteen year old daughter has unfortunately decided that if a boy removes her knickers,he then is madly in love with her. This isn’t her being immoral. This isn’t her ignoring her faith. It is her persevering on an idea and not understanding in the slightest how devastatingly destructive it is-to her. I have told her,her grown sisters have told her and her dad is about to tell her that males do not and have never thought that way. It matters not. She is convinced and she is stuck in her conviction. Facts have nothing to do with it.
The other complication to this rather awkward situation is she is immature and she is approaching under-aged boys. Now we have the potential for the legal system to intervene. No,this is not a deterrent. She thinks we are not telling her the truth,or she is not included in the laws, and looks at us like we have three heads when we mention the potential for charges.
Fortunately, this daughter does not run the roads,so most of the time she is safe from herself. Unfortunately, she is over eighteen and we walk a bit of a tight rope trying to keep her safe. Earlier this summer she was not at home for over two weeks. She was in a highly chaperoned and very well organized environment. It was because of the (truly) adult leadership we received a call to pick up our daughter in disgrace. We were initially told her consequences would be severe-and we did not disagree-they need to be. Our daughter thought she had managed to skate away freely when several weeks went by and there was no mention of consequences. She was even awarded the highest leadership position available.
Three days later she was quietly stripped of all leadership for six months and required to retake all of the moral leadership classes available. This also disqualifies her for the award she was working on that would have given her many scholarships and increased rank should she choose to pursue the military. Many years worth of very hard work are now out the window because she failed to grasp the enormity of her actions. In her mind the two do not connect. They truely do not connect. All the teaching and real life examples in the world do not help them connect.
She is upset that I am not angry on her behalf. She thinks her consequence is unfair. I am thankful that much,much worse consequences did not occur. I told her that they were fair; more than fair to tell the truth. I suggested strongly that she “man up” and take her consequences. She earned them. I told her that she needs to own up to what she did. She needs to learn from this. I gave her no sympathy. I told her I loved her. I told her it was time to start thinking like an adult. I reminded her that she was not pregnant (which I believe she wants-heaven help us). She is in no position to raise a child-did she want to be making an adoption plan for her child? She was not charged with a crime. She was not expelled from her organization. She is humiliated,not because of shame over her own behavior,but because she was ordering others about and now has to go back to the bottom of the pecking order. She still does not understand the humiliation she has caused her brothers as they listen to the rumors.
She does not understand why she is being punished. She really does not understand. We are hoping that at least this consequence will make an impression on her. We are hoping that she will see that society in general sees this as a very bad thing. If she cannot make good decisions based on internal morals and internal critical thinking,perhaps she will let society teach her.
Or not.
She has so much potential. It is very hard to think it might be stripped away based on the decision to drink while pregnant her birth mom made over eighteen years ago. Decisions made while she herself had the ability for cause and effect stripped away by her own mother’s alcohol use.
FAS is inherited.
I makes you want to cry.